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spontaneous Social Order
Author(s) -
Foss Nicolai Juul
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.1996.tb02712.x
Subject(s) - spontaneous order , nexus (standard) , order (exchange) , sociology , positive economics , social order , institutional economics , neoclassical economics , game theory , epistemology , economics , social science , political science , mathematical economics , law , computer science , philosophy , finance , politics , embedded system
A bstract . This paper relates to the emerging economics/sociology‐nexus, in arguing that economists may have a lesson to learn from the work of the sociologist Alfred Schütz. The problem of coordination , which is the problem of theoretically demonstrating the possibility of spontaneous order in society , is discussed. While conventional economics and classical game‐theory have not solved or even convincingly addressed this problem, it is explicitly addressed by Austrian and neo‐institutional economics. It is argued that these two traditions in some important aspects dovetail with Schützian insights, in that the Schützian analysis of the structures of the life‐world contains a number of pertinent insights into the coordination problem.